Eu

Friday

Joanna Rossiter

What Angela Merkel can learn from the Queen about vaccine scepticism

You have to feel for Germany. After a fraught vaccine procurement process, not only is the government struggling to persuade its citizens to take the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, but Angela Merkel has now stated that she will not be given the jab on account of her age.  ‘I do not belong to the recommended age group for AstraZeneca,’ the German chancellor told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. It could well be the final nail in the coffin for an EMA-approved, safe vaccine that has cost her country millions. Merkel’s view may be aligned with government policy – she is 66 and therefore, under the German rules which state that over 65s

Wednesday

Mark Galeotti

The EU’s sorry excuse for sanctions won’t change Putin’s ways

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been poisoned and then sentenced to two and a half years in prison. But never mind, the European Union is on the case and has decided to impose sanctions. Just not that many. There are apparently just four officials on the list: Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee, which tackles major crimes; Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Prison Service; prosecutor-general Igor Krasnov; and Viktor Zolotov, the much-feared commander of the National Guard. There is, to be sure, some rationale. Bastrykin, under British sanctions since July, was a key figure in pushing trumped-up charges against Navalny. Kalashnikov was responsible for Navalny being jailed

Constantin Eckner

Germany is regretting its criticism of the Oxford Covid jab

Germany’s fridges are filled with Oxford jabs. But there’s a problem: 80 per cent of the 735,000 doses delivered to Germany so far have not been used. The vaccine is being described in the German press as a ‘shelf warmer’. There are even reports of people missing appointments at vaccination centres if they have been notified that they will receive the AstraZeneca product. While this is alarming, a lukewarm reaction to the vaccine might not come as a surprise. The vaccine’s reputation has been repeatedly undermined by reports about its efficacy. A decision in Germany not to use the vaccine for over-65-year-olds, despite the European Medicines Agency having approved it to be given to

Tuesday

Dr Mark Toshner

We could all pay the price for the EU’s foolish vaccine nationalism

I’m a card carrying, Europe-loving, wishy-washy centre-left liberal. It therefore pains me to point this out: the EU in general, Ursula von der Leyen specifically, and some of the prominent European leaders such as Emmanuel Macron are getting policy and messaging on vaccines badly wrong. They need to urgently ditch the peacock displays of tribal politics. The French president, in particular, who leads one of the most vaccine sceptical western nations, should not have so publicly questioned the efficacy of what has clearly turned out to be a vaccine that is working in the fight against Covid-19. The consequences of their words could well be long-lasting. ‘The early results we

Sunday

Nicholas Farrell

Can Italy’s arch Eurocrat save his country?

The world these days is so blasè about the destruction of democracy that no one even thinks it worthy of comment that an important free country such as Italy has not had an elected prime minister since the last one, Silvio Berlusconi, was forced to resign in 2011 during the Eurozone crisis after a palace coup orchestrated by Brussels, Berlin and Paris. That is ten years without a prime minister chosen by the Italian people at the ballot box in a general election. The electoral system, currently a hybrid of first past the post and proportional representation, is partly to blame. But the real reason is the Italians. They seem

Friday

Constantin Eckner

Are Germans losing faith in the European project?

Germans are increasingly losing faith in the European Union due to its bungled handling of the vaccine roll-out. Germany and the other member states have assigned Brussels to organise and oversee the procurement and distribution of Covid jabs. But, so far, the roll-out has been a logistic mess. According to a poll by Civey, commissioned by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, more than 60 per cent of German citizens said their view of Brussels had worsened in light of the disastrous vaccination management. Almost 70 per cent laid the blame at the feet of fellow German Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, who admitted last week

Thursday

James Forsyth

The EU needs to stop punishing Britain for Brexit

There have always been those on the European side who believe that for the EU project to succeed, Brexit must fail and must be seen to fail. So it is a problem that the first major act of Brexit Britain — going its own way to obtain and approve vaccines — appears to have been a success. For this reason, EU leaders must cast doubt on the achievement. As I say in the magazine this week, look at how Clément Beaune, Macron’s Europe Minister, went out of his way to tweet out his criticisms of the UK approach. (To be fair, there is a Brexiteer version of this hostile sentiment.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The City is losing its battle with Brussels and Amsterdam

No sign of progress towards a workable deal with the EU for financial services, on which news is due next month. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned in unusually frank terms this week that although the UK has granted ‘equivalence’ to the EU in some financial activities, ‘the EU has not so far done likewise to the UK’ and seems unwilling to do so by reference to a ‘common framework of global standards’. Instead, Brussels is seeking to apply to the UK ‘a standard that the EU holds no other country to’, amounting to ‘rule-taking pure and simple’. Given the importance of financial services to the UK economy, that’s

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Power jab: the rise of vaccine diplomacy

At the end of January the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, gave a speech on the tarmac of Santiago airport. ‘Today is a day of joy, excitement and hope,’ he said, standing in front of a Boeing 787 which had just arrived from Beijing. Inside it were two million vaccine doses produced by the Chinese company Sinovac. It was the first of two similar-sized shipments arriving that month. A few days earlier, the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had emerged from Covid confinement to thank a ‘genuinely affectionate’ Vladimir Putin for pledging 24 million Sputnik doses to Mexico in the coming months. Hopes of vaccinating his country with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It is time to make friends with the EU

On Monday morning, Clément Beaune, Emmanuel Macron’s Europe Minister, clipped out the section of his media interview criticising Britain’s vaccination strategy and posted it on Twitter. He declared: ‘What is happening in the UK is not something I envy. It is a strategy of massive acceleration which also means taking more risks because the Covid situation is much worse there.’ Such remarks are becoming something of a habit for Beaune. He fired off tweets lambasting Brexit in the days after the deal was done and grinned broadly in an interview this year when he was questioned about reports that British cabinet ministers had asked him to tone it down on

Wednesday

James Forsyth

David Frost will need to learn to work with the EU

Boris Johnson has made his Brexit negotiator David Frost a full member of the Cabinet and the UK chair of both the partnership council, which manages the UK/EU trade deal, and the joint committee, which handles the Northern Ireland protocol. Frost’s appointment is a recognition that someone is needed at the heart of government to handle the EU relationship – that it can’t be treated as simply a Foreign Office matter, and that it needs to be a full-time job (Michael Gove had previously been the UK chair of these committees). The challenge for Frost will be to get out of the negotiations mindset. The withdrawal negotiations and the trade

Tuesday

Matthew Lynn

Even Guy Verhofstadt has seen through the EU’s vaccine fiasco

It is a rant worthy of Nigel Farage in his pomp. One of the leading figures within the European Parliament has launched a blistering tirade against the Commission’s ineptitude in securing vaccines. The EU is a world leader in making inoculations, he points out. And yet there is a shortage of supply in every country within the Union. The measures taken to fix that so far have been ‘symbolic,’ ‘insufficient’ and sometimes even ‘counterproductive’. Worse, there has been a shocking lack of accountability, with no one held responsible for the failure. The critic? None other than the arch federalist, scourge of Brexiteers, and hero of Lib Dem party conferences, Guy

Monday

Matthew Lynn

Biden’s rift with Brussels is only set to grow

It was meant to be a special relationship. After the tumultuous Trump years, President Biden was planning to reset relations with the European Union, Inherently liberal, rules-based, and engaged with climate change, it would be a natural ally, and far more so than a UK still tainted by Brexit. The Biden team were no doubt looking forward to working closely with officials in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin to repair the damage of the last four years and put the world on a more rational course.  But hold on. It is not going according to plan. There are already reports that the White House is growing increasingly frustrated with the EU.

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Northern Ireland protocol problem

Ursula von der Leyen now admits that she overreacted in the EU’s vaccine row with the UK. She has spoken of her ‘regret’ that Article 16 of the Northern Ireland border protocol was triggered by the European Commission in a Friday night fit of pique at the end of last month. But there is a sense in Brussels that the British are still trying to exploit her misstep. This claim is not entirely baseless. The UK is getting increasingly worried about the protocol, and clearly does see a chance to push for concessions now that the Commission has surrendered the moral high ground. The Northern Ireland protocol was agreed by

Tuesday

Joanna Rossiter

Hungary’s vaccine strategy risks showing up the EU

You have to admire Hungary’s chutzpah. Not only has it bypassed Brussels to pursue its own vaccine procurement strategy, it is also backing two of the most controversial horses in the race: Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm jab. It has just secured enough Sinopharm doses to vaccinate 250,000 people a month while its Sputnik V deal will mean 1 million Hungarians are vaccinated – a tenth of the population. The Sputnik V vaccine may start being rolled out as soon as next week. Hungary’s strategy may appear reckless but its hand has been somewhat forced by EU policy, which prohibitively states that individual member states may only enter into

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: EU’s jab at Britain’s vaccine arms-race

The EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has been in the firing line in recent weeks, over the EU’s failure to procure enough vaccine doses. The Commission’s haphazard programme has left officials scrambling for excuses to explain why the bloc has come up short, with various EU leaders hitting out at AstraZeneca, Britain’s one-dose strategy, and our medicine approvals process. Could those excuses be wearing thin? That might explain why the EU President appeared to come up with a new strategy this weekend for deflecting blame: by accusing Britain of a Cold War mindset. In a video speech to students at Warwick university, von der Leyen explained that she had

Saturday

Kate Andrews

What the EU still doesn’t understand about Britain’s vaccine strategy

Since the outrage caused last Friday, when the European Union looked set to undermine the Northern Ireland protocol less than one month after the Brexit deal came into force, there has been little apology from those in charge. This is not terribly surprising: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has a reputation for passing the buck whenever possible. It’s also thought that last week’s mistakes are particularly hard for the EU to grapple with: desperate to prove Brexit was a mistake, it has been difficult for Brussels to watch Britain’s reputation for handling the Covid crisis change so quickly for the better. Yesterday we got a hint of acknowledgement

Robert Tombs & Graham Gudgin

Ten things we’ve learnt about the Brexit deal

The UK-EU trade deal has now been operating for a month, and the lengthy queues at ports and empty supermarket shelves predicted by some (the ‘cliff edge’ we heard so much of) have failed to materialise. But equally, it is clear that businesses were not fully prepared for new trade arrangements and that EU trade rules on agri-food products are extremely restrictive.  The last month has also confirmed that the Northern Ireland Protocol is unworkable. If unchecked, it will seriously harm the province’s economy. The UK government needs to be ready to take radical unilateral action, if necessary, to alter it. But what else have we learnt about the deal? Here

Virginie Joron

France is furious at the EU’s vaccine bungle

Ursula von der Leyen has clung to an increasingly implausible narrative this week: that the EU made the ‘right decision’ with its vaccine strategy. It’s the clearest sign yet that Brussels is going into panic mode. The Commission president is reported to have turned down requests to hold a public debate in the European parliament on the vaccine roll-out. Von der Leyen decided to only answer questions behind from a select group of MEPs behind closed doors. Finally, left without much choice the Commission president seems to have grudgingly accepted to appear before the European Parliament on Wednesday. The Commission feels increasingly cornered, and rightly so, for the EU’s vaccine struggle

Friday

Steerpike

Von der Leyen gets that sinking feeling

HMS Britain seems to be a nippier beast after her Brexit refit. That is, at least, according to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.  Earlier today the embattled Eurocrat admitted that when it comes to Covid vaccine procurement, the European bloc is a ‘tanker’ by comparison to the UK’s ‘speedboat’. When asked about her ability to get hold of life-saving jabs, she told reporters:  I’m aware that a country might be a speedboat and the EU more a tanker. If we conclude a contract, we need another five days for the member states to say, ‘yes’ — and these are five days, five working days.So, obviously, of course a decision taken